The Ambushers

XVI

ON THE WAY BACK to the motel, I stopped at a public phone booth to make a phone call. I had to get the number from the operator, as it was a new installation not yet listed in the book. After dialing, I let the ringing continue for a long time, but no one answered. Apparently neither Catherine Smith nor her alleged father were at home. Well, they wouldn't be if they were behaving as I hoped and expected them to.

When I reached the motel, Sheila's car was already parked in front of her unit. I hesitated, but there wasn't anything I had to say to her, and if she had anything to say to me, she'd had plenty of opportunity. To hell with her and her dark secrets, anyway. As I entered my room, the phone started to ring. I closed the door, picked up the instrument, and heard her voice on the line.

"Mr. Evans?" she said. "I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Evans, you're probably busy, but-"

I stood perfectly still, holding the instrument tightly.

There were three words she could have used: disturb, bother, and interrupt. I'd always thought interrupt was a bad one, hard to fit naturally into an ordinary greeting, but that was the trouble code we were using, regardless.

I said slowly, repeating the word so she'd know I'd got it, "You're not interrupting anything, Miss Summerton. I just came in the door; I haven't started on my paper work yet. What can I do for you?"

She started to speak. Her voice sounded perfectly steady. I listened, thinking hard. The three code words are variations on the same theme. The first means, I'm in trouble, save yourself. The second means, I'm in trouble, help me.

And the third, the one she'd used, means, I'm in trouble, give me a diversion so I can handle it.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, Miss Summerton. I have an extra instruction booklet. I'll bring it right over."

I put the phone down and stared at the wall, but there was really nothing to think about. The emergency drill gave me no discretion. The agent in trouble calls the signals. Of course, as her senior, it was my prerogative to disregard her call entirely and leave her to the wolves if I thought the operation required it; but if I took action, it had to be the type of action she'd requested.

She'd asked for a diversion, not active help. Whatever the trouble was in there, she was going to handle it herself, all one hundred pounds of her. I thought of the smooth-working team of Catherine and Max, and the ruthless professional way they'd cooperated in slipping that needle into my neck.

I looked at my watch. Ten minutes should be about right, I decided, long enough so whoever had her covered

– as somebody presumably did-would start to get tense and nervous, but not so long that they'd know for sure something was wrong. I spent the time sticking a few things into my pockets that might come in handy. The low sun hit me hard as I left my room, carrying the yellow instruction booklet that had accompanied the questionnaires.

Around the corner, the swimming pool patio was full of half-naked kids. Some grownups lounged in long chairs by the pool, but it was the kids who were doing the splashing and yelling. I waited until the space around Sheila's door was clear for a moment, and walked up quickly and hammered on it hard with my fist.

"Open up!" I called as loudly as I dared. "Open up. This is the police!"

It wasn't what you'd call really clever; in fact it was pretty corny. Well, most diversions are. You start a fight or set fire to a wastebasket or shoot off a gun or a firecracker. The rest is up to the other person, the person in trouble, and he had better move fast-or she had.

I heard a sudden scuffle behind the door. A small-caliber gun went off in there. The crack of it was unmistakable to me, but nobody around seemed to notice, perhaps because of the kid-noises around the pool. There was a long, long pause. I fought back the impulse to Shout silly questions or break down the door. Then it opened and Sheila looked out. She was holding a slim-barreled.22 automatic pistol I'd never seen before.

"I had to break his finger with the trigger-guard before he'd let go," she said calmly. "Otherwise no damage except a hole in the ceiling. Did anybody hear the shot?"

I shook my head. I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her hard for being unharmed, and the hell with her little white lies. But it was hardly the time for a sentimental clinch.

"Good work, Skinny," I said, and I walked past her and looked at the stocky, baldish man sitting on the bed with a sick look on his face, nursing his hand, one finger of which stuck out at a crazy angle.

"It's Ernest Head," Sheila said unnecessarily behind me.

I heard the door close. She went on: "His wife is missing. He thought we might know where she is. When I said I didn't know, he made me call you."

Looking down at the man on the bed, I had that half smug, half-guilty feeling you get when your most diabolical schemes start to pay off.

"He knocked on the door right after I got here," Sheila was saying. "I guess I'd mentioned I was staying at this motel when I interviewed him last night. He stuck the gun in my face and forced his way in. He was talking rather wildly. He seemed to think I knew a lot of things I didn't. I could probably have disarmed him sooner, but it seemed better to let him talk."

Her voice was still quite calm. I glanced at her. There was a darkness to her eyes, a tightness to her mouth, that indicated that being closed up in a room with a wild man with a gun hadn't been quite as easy as she'd like to have me think, but it was a harmless and natural deception. Whatever had happened in Costa Verde, she'd made up for it here.

"What did he have to say?" I asked.

"His real name in Schwarzkopf, Ernst Schwarzkopf. His wife's real name is… was, before she married him, Gerda Landwehr." Sheila glanced at me rather accusingly. "You knew?"

"I heard the names last night, you know where."

The man on the bed looked up. "Gerda," he said. "Gertrude… Trudie… Where is she? What have you done with her?"

Sheila said, "Currently Gertrude Head is a middle-aged American housewife with dark 'hair. I met her last night. But once, he says, back in Germany, Gerda Landwehr was blonde and beautiful-and strictly on the make."

"She just wanted fun," Head protested. "All girls do.

She wanted fun and money and music and dancing."

"They were going to be married," Sheila said. "But then the Nazis came along, and the war, and Gerda got some better propositions and took them. She apparently had several uniformed playmates, one in particular, who got stationed in one of the camps-the same camp as a certain general we've heard of. I gather she made herself a bit conspicuous there. There was that woman who had lamp-shades made of human skin, remember? Gerda seems to have had a few ideas along the same lines."

"That isn't true!" Head said quickly. "I told you! It was all lies, lies, made up by people who were jealous! Gerda never-"

Sheila said, "Anyway, the war went the wrong way, and the Nazi bubble burst. One day there was a knock on Ernst's door. He opened it, and there was his glamorous Gerda, starving, half-frozen, in rags. The hounds were on her trail. She'd been on the run for months. She could run no longer. All she wanted was a place to lie down and rest, she said. She didn't expect his forgiveness. He could do as he pleased, just so he let her rest in his warm room for a moment, and gave her something to eat, before he called the authorities. You can guess the rest. He hid her out and finally, somehow, got them both to America under assumed names. They've been here ever since."

Ernest Head looked up. "We have led good, useful lives here. We have done no harm. Is there no end? Is she never to be allowed to live down a mistake made in youth, fifteen, twenty years ago? Why can't you leave her in peace?" He hesitated. "At least tell me where she is. Tell me what is happening to her. Please."

I said, "Tell me what you think is happening to her."

"I think you are interrogating her somewhere, maybe abusing her. To make her talk."

"About what?" I asked. "About something that happened in a Nazi concentration camp fifteen or twenty years ago?

You have led good useful lives here, Mr. Head. So you said. You've done no harm. What would your wife have to talk about at this late date that would be of interest to anyone?"

There was a long silence. I made a slight sign to Sheila. She moved closer. Head was looking down at his hurt hand. I slipped a small case out of my pocket, which Sheila palmed. She went silently into lie bathroom.

"Well, Mr. Head?" I said.

"There was a telephone call," he said without raising his eyes. "Many months ago, almost a year. I saw Gerda's face change as she answered. The man at the other end knew everything. It was blackmail. She had to obey."

"What were the orders?"

"We often go camping in good weather. We were to drive south, into the desert, and camp there. And look for rocks.

I collect rocks. A jeep came and took Gerda away. She was gone for two days. Then she came back and we returned to Tucson."

"Did she say where she'd been?"

He shook his head. "But afterwards we bought the portable radio, and she would listen to the short-wave at certain times, and sometimes she would go out or people would come to the house, people I did not know."

I said, "Is it to be the Fourth Reich, Ernest? Here on the two American continents?" He didn't answer. I asked, "How did Gerda take it? Was she happy when she came back from the two-day trip? Excited? Expectant? Triumphant maybe?"

He looked up quickly and started to speak, but checked himself. "I told you," he said sullenly. "She was forced to cooperate. She could do nothing else."

"She could have called the American authorities."

"And revealed herself?" He shuddered. "You forget, she is on the list. They are still after her. They will never give up. They are not human. If they learned where she was living, they would come, like vultures out of the sky." He looked at me for a moment. "Perhaps you are the ones. The ones we have been fleeing all these years. If you are, I have only one thing to ask. Make it swift. Finish it. Don't drag it out any longer. It has gone on long enough."

"Sure," I said. "Now let me look at that hand." I bent over him and took the hand and examined it. "It'll take a doctor to set the finger. But we'll give you something to kill the pain."

I had the one hand. I clamped down on the other before he could snatch it away and nodded to Sheila, who'd come up behind him. He gasped a protest, but I held him steady while she slipped the hypo into his arm. Catherine Smith and her Man Friday had no monopoly on the technique or the equipment. It's practically standard among professionals these days. Ernest Head struggled very briefly; then he sighed and went to sleep. We arranged him comfortably on the bed.

"How much did you give him?" I asked.

"The max. Four hours," Sheila said.

"We'll get somebody in to take care of him," I said.

"Maybe they'll keep him at the ranch for a little, although they don't really like to use the place for that purpose.

Somebody'll have to find out about his kids and make arrangements before too many questions get asked." I frowned. "Where'd you put that?"

"It's on the dresser."

"Bring it along. These sawed-off.38s Washington keeps wishing off on us are too damn noisy." I drew a long breath. 'Well, let's go find the infamous Gerda Landwehr."